Smoke + Mirrors. If you always have something to celebrate, you always have a reason to drink wine. #Result

26 May: Little Kaspar and the ongoing love of shiny things.

Yesterday was International Wine Day but we decided to go with Towel Day instead because we liked the idea of drinking wine to celebrate the life of Douglas Adams rather than to line the coffers of some generic wine brand like Hardy’s . We’re odd like that.

This site now has a theme tune. Go to YouTube and search The National All The Wine. Listen and read.

Take today – whilst the rest of the world no doubt celebrates some celebrity shite like Beyonce having her hair cut – (it’ll be an Illuminati plot) – we’re going to have a delicious drink to commemorate a mysterious feral child, Kaspar Hauser who was discovered wandering the streets of Nuremberg today in 1828. (Maybe the world will surprise me and #MysteriousFeralChild is trending on Twitter right now.) (It’s not, I’ve just looked ….)

The story of Kaspar is, indeed, a strange one involving mysterious letters, black bread and an attraction to shiny objects. A fuller version than I can be bothered to write – Mrs Drink Wine currently being stood alluringly in a doorways seductively waving her Merlot – can be read HERE.

The important bit for us being the telling words “and walking strangely as if drunk.” To commemorate this chilling, and almost forgotten event, we should aspire to consume just enough wine to walk in a similar manner and be captivated by shiny things. (This is normally around 11:13 for me. morning or evening – I’m not fussy. )

If none of this appeals you could, of course, drink wine to celebrate Ireland finally deciding that women should have a say over what happens to their own bodies or, simply because it’s The Day After Drink Wine Day. The important thing – as regular readers know – is to have some cover story ready for when the fuckwits arrive and accuse you of drinking too much.

And this – should you have stayed so far – is the entire moral of this year long day to day homage to wine and gentle drunkenness. Wine probably doesn’t do you that much good but it’s unlikely it does the damage that the so called experts ascribe to it. And, like many of the quotes I tag on at the end have said, gripping that tiny glass of fermented grape juice in your hands at the end of the day, is actually gripping a little bit of human history infused with stories, friendships and nature. And it intensifies little segments of life – be they meals, events, tragedies, friendships. If these panels of medical government chosen killjoys ARE right – then so what? As LCD Soundsystem say in “All My Friends” : “I wouldn’t trade one stupid decision for another five years of life.”

You can call me selfish but I want my risottos to score a 10 on taste rather than a perfectly passable 7, I want dancing in the dark to music to be sublime with a glass in my hand rather than okay, I want love to be the brightest shiny thing in the whole world with conversation littered by quotes from Rumi and Neruda and the taste of tannin on my lips. I’ll take my chances. You should too.

And so, finally, 365 days and 120, 000 words later it’s over. Thank you to all my regular readership of four (occasionally five.) In the words of this site’s soundtrack by the National, always remember: “You are a festival, you are a parade, your wingspan: unbelievable.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7Uz-oz9okA)

A quote: “Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.” Benjamin Franklin.